


Promises

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: African American Skywalkers, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Bad Parent Han Solo, But Where Is Luke? Alone with the Bees?, Character(s) of Color, Deal with a Devil, Fairy Tale Elements, Familial Conflict, Love, Parent-Child Relationship, Selkies, Sirens, Temptation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 23:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9686081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: He thinks at first that it's a corpse. Pale, large, larger than it should be it's, it's dragging something behind it, a wake in the water.It sings.It smiles and its teeth are sharp.“Come in,” it says. “Come into the water. There's nothing scarier than me here. And I will not eat you tonight.”





	

Ben’s mother sings to him sometimes when he's little and when he can't sleep. In the rocking of _The Falcon_ , on the long nights when it is time for little boys to sleep and time for captains to sort their catches, it is just enough with her softened voice to send him off. She can't sing really. But she can hold a calming hum with a few words here and there, a melody.

Sometimes she tells him a story, from her mother, or her father, or other things she’s picked up. When she was not much older than he is now, she traveled north so far the snow never melts, and there are separate words for separate kinds of ice. She answers almost anything he asks and hums him to sleep, on land or sea, small strong hands working beeswax and oil into the backs of his hands, his elbows, knees, and heels. Her own hands are rough with work but she swears by the honey and beeswax Uncle Luke sends them, the one for colds and the other for skin. Sometimes Ben pretends to be sick and Leia pretends to believe him and he gets a spoonful to savor without coughing.

His mother is a fierce woman but she's also kind, she pets his hair and tells him love is good.

But some people aren’t enough. Even if they try.

More than anything, he wishes his father would come home and stay. He wishes that his tall handsome father was as strong as his beautiful strong mother. He knows, even though his mother tells him otherwise, that if he were better, smarter, kinder, _stronger_ like his mother and not just what he can carry, his father would stay, would have to stay. Leia tells him that his father loves them both.

“Love is good Ben, it's some of the best of what we can be. But some people just aren't big enough, not big enough to hold the love and the worry, the pain that loving someone can bring. Sometimes being human means failing to be enough.”

Ben knows that his mother always tells the truth, just like his father tries, and never keeps promises. He vows not to fall in love. He won’t make promises he can’t keep.

*

He thinks at first that it's a corpse. Pale, large, larger than it should be it's, it's dragging something behind it, a wake in the water.

It sings.

It smiles and its teeth are sharp.

“Come in,” it says. “Come into the water. There's nothing scarier than me here. And I will not eat you tonight.”

*

He hauls the nets with his mother that night, and the next, and does not speak of it, not even when they inspect the nets and he mends a tear, pulls out a sharp and shining stone from the break. Leia sorts their catch, smaller than usual, and calls him over when he finishes. There was a turtle caught in the torn net and it has not drowned. He helps his mother lower the turtle until they let go and it splashes down.

“Farewell, Little Sister,” his mother says. Leia is not superstitious, except when she is.

*

Ben’s father visits sometimes, but he never stays. Han says, “Come north, Leia. It’s better.” Leia shakes her head, her crown of braids touched with silver. Ben’s mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.

“This is our home, Han, and it can be yours too if only you’ll stay. This house, _The Falcon_ , it’s _ours_ , built with sweat and sacrifice, my parents, the community, my own. I can’t leave that Han. Not after everything else outside the island has been taken, sometimes repeatedly. On the ocean, no one is my equal. On that boat I am captain and I’m damn well going to come home with food to feed us. And if anyone doesn’t want to buy it because the captain at the helm is brown or a woman, that’s their problem.”

“It’s different in the north, Leia.”

“You say that, but you don’t really believe it. I’ve been north, Han. It’s different. But it’s not home.”

*

Leia’s father Anakin was a tall man, strong, smart, fast. He was no saint, but he spoke clearly and with conviction, and all who heard him believed him.

But in the end even John Henry’s heart gave out.

*

Leia loves her husband when he is near and loves and fears for him when he is far. She loves her son with a ferocity and sorrow to match or surpass her first love. Into this flawed world she brought her child. She will not let this world have its way with him. She has built her kingdom, small and sufficient. She lives by the power of hands and back and mind. And the community is full of those who are widows, or hope not to become them.

*

“Come to me, come to me,” the sharp smiling creature sings. It lifts its arms and pumps its tail and rises from the water with the seeming of a pale, pale man.

“Come into my embrace.”

And Leia’s mother, her slight and fierce mother who came from Ireland and loved a black man and died in childbirth, not the twins’ but their would-have-been little sister, Branna had taught her daughter and son of the fair folk, beautiful and dangerous. And Leia had retold these long ago stories to her own son. And so Benjamin Walk-Alone, who took his father’s name and not his mother’s, who knows that they can only walk the earth and not the sky, and so Ben walks down the beach one night and sits on the rocks, above the tide line, though perhaps not well above, and he sings. He sings bits and pieces of songs Leia hummed for him and bits and pieces that he learned in places Leia would not approve him going. But Leia does not approve him leaving the island, at least not to go anywhere but the sea.

He’s making something up now, a magnificent ship with many masts and orange sails, no, umber, which rhymes much better, when the creature makes itself known.

“Ridiculous child,” it scoffs, coiling out of the water and onto the rocks faster than Ben thought anything could move, like a spider, or a shadow, or a shadow’s shadow which must be a light. It’s pale, pale like the undersides of sea animals, like the insides of some shells, skin almost translucent, eerie blue lines that could be veins tracking like lightning over the arms reaching out even now. Its face, and its face alone, is speckled with spots like Ben’s own freckles. That it is close enough for Ben to see that means that he is far, far too close to the sea.

“Come to me and I will et thy heart and thou will feel no pain,” it promises, subsiding again as Ben jerks away.

Ben’s heart, as if it heard its name, hastens, gallops, like _The Falcon_ in rough waters.

“Why are you here?” he asks, and if he is afraid he is also fascinated. The creature’s tail is slick, slick like the sides of fish and the insides of humans, slick like bile.

It smiles, and its teeth are sharp, sharp, sharp.

“Once upon a time, one called himself Skywalker and made me a promise. A great feast for his wife’s life, for that of her unborn child. But the unborn child was not alone and the husband’s heart already belonged to his wife. And so Anansi’s child slipped my net, at least for a while.” There’s a pause then, considering, and the creature tilts its chin down and looks up, almost coquettishly, sharp teeth hidden.

“A shame, she died anyhow, of another child, and he died soon after, and who even knows where her great grey skin lies.” And if _shame_ is spoken without feeling, _skin_ is not.

“I could not et of Skywalker’s heart, belonging to another, but the debt is still held. Will you fill it? Will you come into the water, Walk-Alone?”

“Not tonight,” Ben says, and if it is not a promise of yes it is not a promise of no. “Tell me more of Skywalker and his wife. And her great grey skin.”

The creature smiles, and Leia would have wept if she could have seen it. But Leia’s grief is always weaker than her will, and she also would have seen it dead if she knew of it, this corpse-pale siren tempting her son to step into the surf.

Ben’s mind is full. His heart beats.

“Come to me,” it says.

And even past dawn, alone on the beach, he can hear it.


End file.
